Pregnancy and the Flu

Posted by Donna Lazorik, RN, MS. Donna is the Immunization Coordinator in the Division of Epidemiology and Immunization at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

The single best way to stay healthy during flu season is to get a flu vaccine. This is especially important for pregnant women in order to protect both the mother and baby from getting sick and to prevent any possible flu-associated pregnancy complications. The vaccine is perfectly safe; it has been given to millions of pregnant women over many years and has never been shown to cause harm to women or their babies.

In addition, getting vaccinated while you are pregnant can decrease your baby’s risk of getting the flu for up to 6 months after they are born. This is particularly important since babies younger than 6 months are too young to get a flu vaccine. To further protect newborns, all caregivers and close contacts – including fathers, siblings, grandparents and babysitters – should also get vaccinated.

There is still plenty of vaccine available so call your health care provider to schedule an appointment or search for a public flu clinic online athttp://www.mylocalclinic.com. For more information about pregnancy and flu, visit www.mass.gov/flu

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One thought on “Pregnancy and the Flu”

The FDA, the agency that regulates the licensing and use of medications, categorizes both the influenza and the Tdap vaccines as Pregnancy Category B or C. These categories indicate that adequate human testing has not been done that will demonstrate these are safe for pregnant women and the developing foetus. Most manufacturers of decent repute include in their insert that human toxicity and safety studies for pregnant women are inadequate and therefore these prophylactics should be used based on clear need (with consideration for the unknowns). The matter or determining exigency seems to escape you.

Your job, in public health, is to disclose this information and to treat the public you (allegedly) serve as having a brain and able to make informed decisions. This is also known as "informed consent", something that reputable medicine is supposed to look out for.

To state the influenza vaccine "has never been shown to cause harm to women or their babies." is cavalier, and at worst, a violation of basic facts and ethics.

Since the influenza and Tdap vaccines have been licensed there are no decent prospective case controlled studies that examine health outcomes between those pregnant women who have received influenza and Tdap and those who have not. Similarly there are none looking at the status of newborns who, incidentally, are born in a nation with the unenviable distinction of having the highest rate of overall infant mortality in the industrialized world. The same can be said for the absence of studies examining the health of the wholly-unvaccinated to those complying with every recommended injection. It is speculated that this comparison would not turn out well towards the promotion and sale of vaccines.

So inquiring minds might wish to know on what basis do you lean upon when stating that the vaccine is "perfectly safe"?

As for being "effective", this is entirely dependent upon both the human biology of the moment and whether the statistical guesswork involved in formulating the annual influenza concoction is spot on.

Two studies of the Vaccine Event Reporting System (a voluntary, subjective, yet interesting surveillance mechanism) and a European counterpart, both published this year, revealed that ADEM (Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis) aka: brain inflammation was in most cases directly linked to the seasonal influenza vaccine. Along with Tdap, children between birth and age 18 were effected. So that these substances cause brain inflammation in utero and beyond may have escaped your flailing promo.

Proper testing of these vaccines should not be conducted through routine administration against a weak system of surveillance and administered by those who cannot think critically. Using the entire population of pregnant women as a test base without fully informed consent is a significant medical ethics (if not legal) violation that should be addressed firmly by a reputable government, since medicine cannot seem to regulate itself.

Which, oddly, is a function one might assume the Department of Public Health should be doing.

If we had at least one of these entities operating your statement would not be allowed to stand.